Travel is Freedom! "Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts." - Mark Twain

July 7, 2006 I just checked the temperature online, and it's 97 degrees at 11:15 p.m.!! I don't know how to explain it, but the heat is simply OPPRESSIVE. Unless I'm in the shower, I'm constantly sweating. As soon as the shower finishes, my face is covered in sweat, so much that I have to wipe it off before putting sunscreen on, which melts off in 2 minutes. I'm wearing long Thai pants, and a long-sleeved very light-weight Indian shirt I bought for $2. (I don't really need to cover my arms, the Indian women don't!) And underneath my clothing, all I can feel is sweat running from the top of my body to the bottom, drenching my clothing and making me all sticky. And I thought Japan was hot!! Today I have drunk 4 liters of water (that's well over a gallon), a diet Coke, a lemon soda, and a mixed fruit juice...and I have peed only once between 11 a.m. and 11 p.m.!! Unbelievable. I had to put all of the things in my moneybelt (which I wear around my waist under my clothing) in a ziplock bag, because my passport, money, and traveler's checks were soaking wet! Imagine this amount of heat (well over 100 degrees today + god-awful humidity) mixed with the stirred up dirt and garbage in the streets, the cows roaming around seemingly belonging to no one-- their droppings in the streets, touts who won't leave me alone-- all trying to get me to go somewhere, buy something, or look at something, the mixed smells of incense, cooking rice, spices and people. Mix this with blaring horns of motorbikes trying to get past, bells of bicycle rickshaws, boys playing small drums they are trying to sell, beggars asking for money or food, and you've got serious commotion, heat, stimulation, and a taxing arrangement of activities going on all around. Tomorrow won't be as hot, as the rains are supposed to begin....